Abstract
The Self-Intimation thesis has it that whatever justificatory status a proposition has, i.e., whether or not we are justified in believing it, we are justified in believing that it has that status. The Infallibility thesis has it that whatever justificatory status we are justified in believing that a proposition has, the proposition in fact has that status. Jointly, Self-Intimation and Infallibility imply that the justificatory status of a proposition (bottom-level justification) closely aligns with the justification we have about that justificatory status (top-level justification). Self-Intimation has two noteworthy implications. First, assuming that we never have sufficient justification for a proposition and for its negation, we can derive Infallibility from Self-Intimation. Interestingly, there seems to be no equivalently simple way to derive Self-Intimation from Infallibility. This asymmetry provides reason for thinking that bottom-level justification rather than top-level justification drives the explanation for why the levels of justification align. Second, Self-Intimation suggests a counterintuitive treatment of information concerning what justificatory status a proposition has (higher-order evidence). It follows from Self-Intimation that we always have justification for the truth about whether a proposition is justified for us, and therefore, that higher-order evidence could change what we should believe on this matter only by misleading us. This permits forming beliefs about whether a proposition is justified for us without regard to higher-order evidence, and thus reveals a reason for thinking that top-level justification is evidentially inert.
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Notes
By ‘justification’ I mean sufficient, propositional, rational justification. If S has justification to believe P, then whether or not S justifiably believes P, the proposition P enjoys sufficient support in S’s situation. I use talk of justification, what we should believe, and what is rational to believe interchangeably.
We can use the propositions (P1) 2 + 2=4 and (P2) 2 + 2=5 as basis for counterexamples to all of (2), (3), (5) and (8), in all directions. I will not go through each counterexample, but here is how we could argue against (8). We should not believe P2, so ¬JP2. Yet we should believe that we should not believe P2, so J¬JP2. Likewise, we should not believe that we should not believe P1, so ¬J¬JP1. Yet we should believe P1, so JP1.
Recall that the notion of justification in the level-connection principles is propositional. As such, these principles describe relations between propositions that we should believe and other propositions that we should believe. They do not describe relations between propositions that we in fact believe and propositions that we should believe. They entail, for instance, the wide-scope requirement not to believe P while believing that we should not believe P. They do not entail, for instance, the narrow-scope requirement to believe that we should believe P, if we believe P. See Broome (1999) for a discussion of narrow-scope and wide-scope normative requirements.
Some level splits appear worse than others. For instance, if BU3 is false, then in some cases we should believe P but should also believe that we should not believe P. This seems worse than if BU1 is false, which would mean that in some cases we should believe P despite lacking justification that we should believe P. See Huemer (2011) and Smithies (2012) for reasons to think that the latter kind of case is also troublesome.
See Horowitz (2014) for reasons to avoid certain violations of the enkratic constraint.
I follow Dutant and Littlejohn’s (2016) terminology here.
Dutant and Littlejohn (2016) note this as well.
I follow Smithies (2012) in using the names Self-Intimation and Infallibility for these principles.
When we assume Infallibility, that is, J¬JP → ¬JP and JJP → JP, it is not clear how either JP → JJP or ¬JP → J¬JP would follow. For example, let us assume the antecedent of the latter, that is, ¬JP. From JJP → JP, it would follow that ¬JJP. Since ICJ says that either ¬JJP or ¬J¬JP is true, ICJ is of no help here—we already have ¬JJP, from which the disjunction ¬JJP or ¬J¬JP trivially follows. So the derivation comes to a halt, and no way to reach the desired J¬JP seems available. Of course, if JJP and J¬JP were the only justificatory statuses that we could have toward JP, then the derivation of Self-Intimation would succeed. But we cannot rule out the possibility that neither JJP nor J¬JP is true, i.e., that we should suspend judgment about whether JP.
Trickle-down proponents arguably include Christensen (2007), Elga (2007), and Feldman (2007). Bubble-up proponents arguably include Kelly (2005), Schoenfield (2015), Smithies (2012), Titelbaum (2015), and van Wietmarschen (2013). Here I leave out the option that both bottom-level justification and top-level justification affect each other until the levels align. This is an interesting option worth considering, although doing so here would distract from the focus of the project. Proponents of principles that give some weight to our bottom-level justification and some to our top-level justification may be on board with such a suggestion. See Kelly (2010), Sliwa and Horowitz (2015), and Christensen (2016).
Kiesewetter (2016) notes a parallel point.
Prudentially, we may need to use HOE given the difficulty of assessing our top-level justification without it. Going by our HOE may significantly boost our odds of forming the belief that corresponds to our evidence. But this kind of prudential necessity does not figure into rational requirements. Taking steps to improve our odds of forming beliefs that correspond to our evidence (like getting enough sleep, or rechecking our reasoning) is not rationally required. Prudential considerations like these may be behind the intuition that HOE is evidentially significant. For an opposing view, see Schechter (2013).
Even if there are other kinds of HOE, the conclusion of the upcoming argument is significant as long as it is true of this kind of HOE.
We should distinguish HOE from evidence of evidence (EoE). EoE for P sometimes fails to be evidence for P, and so if HOE were a kind of EoE, there would already be reason to wonder when it is genuine evidence. But the kind of evidence that is most relevant in this context is not evidence of evidence. For instance, if we know that our peers share our evidence, their disagreement would not be evidence that there is some evidence that we are not aware of. See Tal and Comesaña (2017)
The view that higher-order evidence affects what we should believe is a popular one. Most (e.g., Christensen (2007), Feldman (2007), Cohen (2013)) take it to require revision both of our belief about JP, and of our belief about P. Some (e.g., Worsnip (2018)) take it to be stronger evidence about JP than about P. The argument on offer here suggests that with Self-Intimation, incoming information about whether JP is true does not affect what we should believe about JP, let alone P.
Thanks to an anonymous Erkenntnis reviewer for this point.
Self-Intimation would be (SP → SSP) ∧ (¬SP → S¬SP), and Infallibility would be (S¬SP → ¬SP) ∧ (SSP → SP).
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Acknowledgements
Thanks goes to Stewart Cohen, Juan Comesaña, Carolina Sartorio, Declan Smithies, Jason Turner, and Robert Van’t Hoff, for providing insightful feedback at various stages of this project.
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Tal, E. Self-Intimation, Infallibility, and Higher-Order Evidence. Erkenn 85, 665–672 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-018-0042-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-018-0042-4